Up in the north

When you are in Helsinki at this time of the year you can either freeze or take part at the Finnish Open and warm up by getting your body moving (and/or you can get familiar with the famous Finnish sauna culture ;-))! Nicole Eisler and Graham King were the two Swiss who were chasing their opponents on the courts at this well organised tournament last weekend.

Eisler started on Friday with the Mixed Doubles category and her „blind date“ Mika Kiljunen from Finnland. They played well together, but Amke Fischer/Duncan Stahl and Lilian Druve/Roland Pichler were too strong for them. Their bronze medal was well deserved in the end though.

Eisler’s most important singles match was already on Saturday morning, when, because of the round robin mode, Eisler already had to face Lilian Druve. Our Swiss #1 had never beaten the Swedish Racketlon legend before but was already full of confidence before the match. And this little dream that had been cooking for 9 years finally came true. The key was that Eisler adapted well against Druve’s defensive game with long pimples and won table tennis for the first time.

In match number 2, just shortly afterwards against later winner Amke Fischer (GER), Eisler was mentally too tired to put up too much of a fight. But on Sunday, Eisler was full of energy again and secured her silver medal with a victory over Mirianda Frick (LIE). Congratulations on this big success!

King didn’t participate in the Sen +55 due to the tactical reason of World Champs preparation and instead wanted to challenge the +40’s and +45’s. But the bigger challenge was maybe that he had to wait for his first match until Saturday evening. There were only a few points missing in that difficult second-round match against local Seppo Raiski. And like Eisler, King also experienced mental tiredness after this brutal match which lasted nearly two hours. The next match was straight afterwards and there is no need to say that our King, by then extremely hungry and tired, unfortunately lost it. There was then a repeat performance on Sunday, when again a tough first match was lost by only 5 points, and then almost immediately followed by another match, when no real resistance could be offered. But nevertheless, our strategist is ready for the World Champs! ;-)